Speaker Bureau or Book Direct: What the Middle Costs You

A speaker bureau sits between you and the person on stage. That position is worth paying for on some bookings and not on others, and the hard part is that almost nobody will tell you what it costs.

We checked all 145 organisations in this directory for any public statement about commission, markup or what the bureau takes from a booking.

2 of 145 say anything at all about what they take.

Gold Coast Speakers in Australia advertises direct booking with no commission. ProSpeakers in Toronto states that it adds no premium to the speaking fee. Nobody else addresses it publicly.

That is not necessarily sinister. It is, though, the single biggest reason first-time bookers cannot tell a good deal from a bad one.

There are five routes, not two

The question is usually framed as bureau or direct. In practice this directory contains five different things, and they behave differently.

Route	In this directory	What it is	Who pays the middle
Full-service bureau	71	Represents many speakers non-exclusively, shortlists for you, handles contracting	Usually the speaker, out of the fee
Entertainment agency with speakers	35	Books bands, comedians and MCs, with a speakers roster alongside	Usually the speaker
Directory or marketplace	16	A searchable list. Some pass the enquiry on, some hand you the contact	Varies, often the speaker pays to be listed
Exclusive management	10	Represents a small roster across their whole career, not just speaking	The speaker, under a management agreement
Industry body directory	10	A members list run by the profession. You contact the speaker yourself	Nobody. The member pays dues

The last row is the genuine direct route, and it is the one most buyers do not know exists. Every country in this directory has one: Professional Speakers Australia, PSANZ in New Zealand, the Professional Speaking Association covering the UK and Ireland, the National Speakers Association in the United States, CAPS in Canada, and APSS in Singapore.

These are not booking agencies and do not pretend to be. The PSA office says plainly that it will not make introductions or referrals, and that bookers contact speakers directly. Membership of the higher tiers is not trivial to get, either. Professional Membership of Professional Speakers Australia requires verified speaking income of AUD 50,000 in the past twelve months plus an unedited live recording. That is a filter you get for free.

What the middle actually costs

Since almost nobody publishes a rate, the honest answer has to be sourced from outside this directory.

Trade sources put the standard bureau commission at 20 to 30 percent of the speaker's fee. BigSpeak, which is listed here in both Australia and the United States, is one of the few that explains the model publicly on its own site: it says some bureaus charge a flat commission while others may charge up to 30 percent of a keynote speaker's fee.

Two things follow, and they matter more than the percentage.

The commission is usually inside the number you are quoted, not added to it. BigSpeak's own explanation says the commission is often included in the speaker's flat rate, so it does not show up as a separate charge. You are not handed a bureau invoice. You are handed one fee.

That means a bureau booking is not automatically more expensive than a direct one. If the speaker quotes AUD 10,000 either way and the bureau takes its share out of that, you pay the same and get the bureau's work for nothing. Whether that is what happens on your booking is exactly the thing worth asking about.

The risk sits in the gap between those two models. If the bureau takes commission from the speaker, your price is unaffected. If the bureau adds a margin on top, your price is higher and you cannot see by how much. ProSpeakers in Toronto is the only organisation in this directory that publicly commits to the first model, stating that you book with nothing added to the speaking cost.

That is a useful benchmark to hold others to, and it costs nothing to ask.

What a bureau does for the money

It is easy to read the above as an argument against bureaus. It is not. On the right booking they are comfortably worth the cut, and the work is real.

They shortlist. A good agent has seen these people on stage and knows which ones handle a hostile post-lunch room and which ones need a warm audience. You cannot get that from a showreel, and a showreel is edited by definition.

They know availability and price before you ask. The research you would spend a fortnight on is a phone call for them.

They carry the contracting. Deposits, cancellation terms, travel, recording rights and the awkward conversation when your date moves. If your event has a procurement process, a bureau that already has your paperwork on file is worth real money in time saved.

They carry risk. A speaker who cancels three weeks out is the bureau's problem to solve, and a bureau with 12,000 people on its roster can solve it.

They filter. Speakers Spotlight in Canada says it is approached by well over a thousand speakers a year and takes under one percent. Whatever else you think of the model, somebody has done the sifting.

When to book direct

Direct is usually the better call when:

You already know exactly who you want. If you have their name, the bureau is adding introduction value you do not need. Most speakers list their own contact details, and many sit on several rosters anyway.
Your budget is tight. At the bottom of the market, a percentage is a meaningful share of a small fee, and the speaker may have more room to move when they are talking to you rather than to an agent.
You are a charity, a school or a community group. Many speakers hold rates for this work that never appear on a bureau page. You have to ask the speaker.
You want one specific local person. Regional speakers are under-represented on the big rosters, which skew to capital cities.
The relationship matters more than the transaction. If you want the same person back annually, going direct builds something a booking does not.

Start at your national industry body's directory. It is free, the members are working professionals, and you get the speaker's own contact details.

When a bureau earns its cut

A bureau is usually the better call when:

You do not know who you want. This is the main event. Describe the audience, the theme and the budget, and let someone who does this daily come back with five names.
The booking is large or high-profile. Above roughly AUD 15,000, the contracting gets complicated and the cost of getting it wrong exceeds the commission.
You need more than a keynote. An MC, a panel, a workshop and a closing act from one contact is genuinely easier. That is what the 35 entertainment agencies here are built for.
You are booking across borders. Visas, withholding tax, travel and time zones are where an international bureau earns its money quickly.
Your organisation requires a supplier with insurance, terms and an ABN or equivalent. A freelance speaker may not have the paperwork your procurement team needs. A bureau will.
You have no time. This is a legitimate reason and nobody should apologise for it.

What the industry says about itself

In October 2025, the trade publication Skift Meetings reported allegations from professional speakers about bureau practices. It is worth reading if you book speakers regularly, and it is worth being precise about what it is.

The allegations reported include undisclosed markups, where a bureau agrees a fee with the speaker and quotes the client a materially higher number without telling either side; payments from speakers to bureau staff in exchange for being recommended; and speakers being put forward ahead of better-suited ones because they pay a larger share. Speakers named in the piece include Scott Stratten and Scott McKain, both long-standing professionals in the industry.

Two caveats, and they are important.

These are allegations reported by a trade publication, not findings of fact, and nothing in that reporting is a claim about any specific organisation listed in this directory. We have not verified the individual accounts and do not repeat them as established.

The reason to mention it at all is that it explains why the questions below are reasonable ones to ask. An industry where a fifth to a third of the money is invisible to the buyer invites this sort of story. The fix is not to avoid bureaus. It is to ask, and to notice how readily the answer comes.

A bureau that answers the markup question straight away has just told you something useful. So has one that will not.

Seven questions that get a straight answer

Ask these of any bureau, on any booking. None of them is rude, and a good agent will have answered them a hundred times.

Is your commission taken from the speaker's fee, or added to it? The single most useful question on this list.
Is the number you have quoted me the speaker's fee, or the speaker's fee plus your margin? Ask even if you already asked question one. The wording matters.
What would this speaker cost me if I booked them directly? A bureau operating on the speaker's side can answer this comfortably.
Are travel and accommodation inside this number or on top? Both are normal. Discovering it afterwards is not.
Do you represent this speaker exclusively, or are they on other rosters? Ten of the organisations here are exclusive management. The rest are not, which means you may have a choice of route to the same person.
What are the deposit and cancellation terms, in writing, before anything is paid?
If this speaker pulls out, what happens? The answer tells you whether you are buying a booking or a service.

If the answers come easily, you are dealing with someone who has nothing to hide. That is most of them.

Where these numbers come from

The counts of 145 organisations, the five routes and the finding that 2 disclose their commission all come from this directory's own data, with every organisation checked on its own website in September 2026.

The 20 to 30 percent range does not. No organisation here publishes its own rate, so that figure is attributed to trade sources including BigSpeak's public explanation of the model, and is presented as an industry range rather than a verified fact about any listed bureau.

Where a market or a company publishes nothing, this guide says so rather than filling the gap with an estimate.

Nobody pays to appear in this directory and no listing can be bought, moved or removed. If you run one of these organisations and publish your commission terms, tell us and we will list you among those that do. That list currently has two names on it, and it should be longer.

The underlying data is free to use with attribution, as JSON or as plain markdown.